Thursday, May 26, 2005

 

Good gifts

I'm constantly amazed that people have talents and aptitudes. From a purely naturalistic standpoint, it wouldn't be completely surprising if some people were better at moving quickly and gracefully, as that could help with hunting or escaping from a hunter. But lots of people have talents that suit them especially well for stuff we've made up. Some people have just what it takes to be computer programmers. Others, while they might be generally athletic, are perfectly suited for volleyball. I mean, really, when you think about what the average height of humans was two or three centuries ago, what is the chance that now you'd get a bunch of guys who are over 6'6" and have the ability to arc a ball through a hoop?

But what astounds me even more than people's talents is their preferences. I'm constantly in wonder over the fact that people have preferences, and seem to have them from very early on. Some babies go for apricots, others for the green beans. There's a little boy in our church who from the time he was old enough to get away from his parents' supervision has been trying to get to the drum set. He's drawn to it. Other people want to work with cloth, or make food, or sculpt, or be with animals. And when aptitudes and preferences correspond, as it seems they frequently do, that's a really good gift.

I think about this a lot when I drum. I don't remember how I came to pick drums as my band instrument back in middle school. I think it was just an offshoot of piano--I was looking for something familiar, and figured I could do xylophone or something. And I didn't stay with band long or pick up much skill during that time, and then nothing with drums for years and years. Then an opportunity arose, and armed with half-forgotten basics and whatever natural aptitude I have, I started playing. It's been enough that I haven't gotten fired from the worship team yet. I enjoy it, and I think I'm just designed to do it. Not professionally or even in a noteworthy way, but good enough to serve, at least for here and now. And that's a pretty good gift.

Sunday, May 22, 2005

 

Learning about teaching

Well, I definitely miss teaching. I find myself thinking about scenarios where I can do the kinds of things I do when I teach. I'm wishing there was someone who wanted to ask me questions. This is very good news, considering that when I left I wasn't sure that by the end of sabbatical I'd be even willing to go back, let alone looking forward to the good parts of it.

I'm also completely anxious about it, at least based on the frequent not-ready-for-the-first-day-of-class dreams I'm having. This next week I want to put some final touches on some documents and see if I can get moved back into my office. Maybe that will calm me down. It's weird that I have this anxiety. I am better prepared to start fall than I've probably ever been before the end of May. If I could get copies run, I could start tomorrow. (In the dream last night I showed up the first day without copies, and IT was still replacing the computer in my office, so I had no way to get anything printed.) And of course, I don't need to be ready yet.

I suspect it's just that I know I'm out of practice. When it sometimes happens that I don't play basketball for several months, that first time I get back on the court, I'm not looking to play in a game. I know I don't have my shot back yet. After a day or two of just shooting around, the confidence returns. I hope that a little prep work these next couple of weeks will calm me down for summer, and that then some time rehearsing before start will put an end to this pointless anxiety.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

 

geek wars II

Today a couple of different sports radio talk-shows were poking fun at the Star Wars geeks, who are out in force (har!) and in costume to stand in line for hours to see the 12:01 a.m. shows of Episode III. Both shows made some comparison between Star Wars geeks and sports fanatics, but both tended to say that the sports fanatics weren't "as bad."

What they failed to account for is that a new Star Wars film only happens ever few years, and only six times in all of history, total. Can you imagine how annoying sports fans would be if they had to wait years to see a new baseball game?

Also, the excitement of the Star Wars crowd is understandable, since Episode III is widely expected to be the best of the new films. Of course, this is like saying that so-and-so is the most talented Monkee, or that such-and-such is the best episode of Green Acres, or that this particular year's Republican/Democratic National Convention was the most interesting to watch ever.

Still, despite the bad review my wife read on it today (saying that the movie failed to really answer the crucial question, "Why does Anakin go to the Dark Side?"), I'm hoping that when I finally get to see it at some matinee someday, I'll find something in it worth liking. That's all the more enthusiasm I can muster. But for those who are still waiting in line: May the Force be with you. Because something is going to have to help you with bladder control.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

 

Treasure Memories

As I sat in the "cheap seats" movie theater on Saturday I wondered if I had somehow missed a word in the title. Maybe instead of National Treasure, it was supposed to be National Lampoon's Treasure. Because this is definitely one of the most ridiculous movies I've seen in a long time. This is a film that starts out in the Arctic Circle with characters wearing ordinary winter coats and no protection for their faces or ears. From there, it gets less realistic.

I knew it would be ridiculous, of course, from the trailers. The premise of the movie is that the founding fathers of the U.S. had some vast treasure and hid it somewhere, leaving behind clues to its whereabouts. This is a pretty stupid premise. Consider:

To: Benjamin Franklin
From: George Washington, General, Valley Forge

Ben:
We are freezing and starving. At this rate we will never make it through the winter. SELL THE BLOODY TREASURE and get us food, blankets, and ammunition!

--George

I won't go into all the rest of the silliness--it's just too easy. But I did wonder later why anyone would come up with such a thing. It may be too much of a stretch, but it seems to me that this is an attempt to re-imagine those founding fathers in a way that's more friendly to our greedy, materialistic society. It's not enough that they risked their lives to try to do something unheard of and break away from one of the super-powers of the day and establish a functional republic with protections for individual liberties: they have to have been rich, too.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

 

If I thought LOST was bad TV...

So, last night was the season finale of Star Trek: Reprise (theme: “boldly going where we have gone many, many times before”) in the form of two complete episodes. (Oh, boy!) (I believe the episode titles were "Hoshi is a wimp" and "We're so boring, our final episode is about some other show.") Even though I gave up on this show sometime back in its first season, I thought it might be interesting to see how they ended it. And the answer is: pretty much like they started it. I laughed out loud two or three times, my wife said she wanted to “hurl” because of the female characters, and on the whole it didn’t make any sense or particularly seem very important.

This leaves us with the question: is Star Trek forever dead on big and small screens? (It will probably go on forever in the form of conventions, online “sims,” memorabilia, etc.)

At the moment, my answer is: that’s the best we can hope for.

I am not a Trekker fanatic. I’ve never been to a convention. I don’t own any Star Fleet uniforms, or any collectible merchandise.

But my credentials as a fan are in order. When I was a little kid, and the original series was the only Star Trek, on in reruns, I would sprint up our long driveway every day so that I wouldn’t miss more than I had to. (Show started at 4:00; I got off the bus about 4:12. To this day if I see the opening of an original series episode I will think I haven’t seen it, until we get about 15 minutes in.)

I watched Next Gen fairly faithfully for most of its run, and was very devoted to Deep Space Nine, or as it is more formally known, “The best Trek ever.” I tried to watch Voyager, off and on, despite its many problems. (Toward the end we called it “The Doctor and Seven show.”) And I gave Reprise a chance for a while. I’ve seen all the movies and can recite most of The Wrath of Khan.

So why am I hoping that we’ve seen the last movie and the last TV show? Because for several years now, they have been running it into the ground, and without hope of something changing, I’d rather see no further damage done.

The movies had their moments. II was great, VI was solid. I can say good things about Generations and even First Contact. But since then it’s been increasingly clear that the movies are just about being cash machines with superficial plot lines. They completely avoid all the complexity that made the late Next Gen / complete DS9 era great.

The TV shows have been worse. You can just see what happened when they switched from syndication (NG and DS9) to being on Paramount’s own network (Voyager and Enterprise). The plots get dumbed down. Women get treated as inferior and mostly as sex objects. We steal from ourselves and don’t do anything too edgy. And people yawn and turn to something else. And the network comes in and says, “People aren’t watching! We need more sex! And fistfights!”

So unless someone can wrest control of the franchise away from the money-grubbing Hollywood-mindset execs at Paramount, it’s better if there is no more Star Trek. We still have the good ones on DVD. Serenity is coming soon, and even if that doesn’t lead to a new Firefly series, it’ll remind people what’s possible, and someday there will be another sci-fi series worth watching on television.

Friday, May 13, 2005

 

Booklist

Some books worth mentioning at the moment:

Just re-read The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. Still the best, most important book outside of the Bible for modern Christians to read.

Also recently finished Rumors of Another World by Phillip Yancey. Lots of good examples, suprirsing insights, and great quotes.

Next fall I'm going to teach 1984 by Orwell and 2024 by Ted Rall. Looking forward to that.

Plastic Man: On the Lam by Kyle Baker. It's Plastic Man! Plus, it's as fun to look at as any comic I've seen in a long time.

Speaking of comics, I'm still waiting for the latest Astro City title, Local Heroes, to come out in paperback. What's the holdup?

And if you can't be bothered to read all the archives of Order of the Stick online, you can buy the book: Dungeon Crawlin' Fools.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

 

Get LOST

So we sort of half-accidentally watched Lost last night, and again resolved to be done with it. I think I only liked it in the first place because it's good compared to the rest of the junk on TV.

Because let's face it, the main feature of the show is that they never really tell you anything. Everything is as vague as possible, to try to get you to come back after the commercial, next week, next season, when maybe we'll give you another little crumb of information. Here is how I think it goes when they interview a writer for the show:

Producer: Can you tell me about your last job?
Candidate: I was a writer for another show, but then I did something...terrible.
Producer: And before that?
Candidate: Before that, I worked on a...project. You know.
Producer: You are being incredibly vague and evasive about everything.
Candidate: Do you think so?
Producer: You're hired.

Last night, (spoilers ahead! Well, not really--nothing here will "spoil" anything) Kate was the Featured Flashback Character of the Week. So we saw her go hook up with an old boyfriend, and at one point they had this exchange:

Kate: Do you think it's still there?
Boyfriend: What?
Kate: You know what.

Well, "what" turns out to be a silly time capsule that they buried when they were maybe twelve years old. Knowing that, this conversation makes perfect sense if you are a character on Lost. Ordinary humans, on the other hand, might sound like this:

Kate: Do you think it's still there?
Boyfriend: What?
Kate: You know what.
Boyfriend: How on earth would I know what you're talking about? Why are you being so vague?!?

Or even:

Kate: Hey, do you think the time capsule is still there?

But that would not produce the desired effect of perpetual suspence over nothing, so we don't do that. (Now, spoilers ahead.) For weeks Locke has been carefully concealing from everybody that he'd found the chamber or whatever it is in the jungle. Last night he revealed it for no apparent reason. And despite yet another backstory-of-Kate episode, we still have no idea what her real, original crime is. And at this point, I don't care. Even if she's innocent of the original crime, she has since done a number of destructive, illegal things while on the lam.

That's the other problem I have with the show, I guess. In all the flashbacks, we discover all these people (even Sawyer) have a heart of gold, but in the real world of the current story, they're awful: violent, selfish, mistrustful and untrustworthy. Hurley is the biggest exception to this, but there's just not enough of Hurley (reported to be the most popular character) to make it worth watching.

Netflix has all kinds of TV series on DVD and provides good service. So we can find better to watch.

 

Best of Nerd Factor and Court Jester

Below are the best posts of my old blogs.

First, from Nerd Factor:

Thursday, January 13, 2005

arbitrary, shmarbitrary

So I was browsing through a roleplaying game rulebook and found an interesting sentence in the introduction to their chapter on all the nitty-gritty rules. It was explaining why there are rules and dice used. It said that if your character always succeeded, that would be boring (true), and if the GM decided everything, it would seem arbitrary.That's right. Their stated reason for using dice to determine whether your character succeeds or not is that it seems less arbitrary than having a human being make a judgment call.

Monday, January 03, 2005

On the nature of geekiness

This insight is the result of a lifetime of being a nerd, combined with my first experiment with fantasy football this year and recently viewing the entertaining documentary Trekkies.I originally thought that my insight had to do with how much useless knowledge we nerds have. In one Calvin and Hobbes strip, Calvin says, “I’m not ignorant, I just command a body of thoroughly useless information.” But reflecting on what I’ve experienced recently, I realized it’s a little different than that. My insight is this: geekiness consists of a vast body of potentially useful knowledge being put to no (socially recognized) use.

In the film, there’s a young man (who manages to be remarkably articulate considering he’s a male teenage Star Trek fan being interviewed by the attractive Denise “Lt. Natasha Yar” Crosby) who really knows his stuff. I don’t just mean that he knows lots of Trek trivia—I mean he knows what collectible is worth getting and why, etc. In other words, he knows everything he needs to know to make a killing on ebay selling off his collection.But he almost certainly never will. His love for what those objects represent will overwhelm any desire he has to make money off of them, so unless some greater love intervenes, he’ll keep them forever. And in a hundred years, his descendants will be on Antiques Roadshow saying, “I guess our grandfather used to collect these, they were from some TV show.” And the congenial antique dealer will talk about what a carefully chosen and well preserved collection this is, and how these action figures are worth $50000 at auction, and the people will blink and say, “Oh my goodness” because it may be 100 years from now but it’s still PBS.

Anyway, my point is that his descendants will be richer not because he carefully planned to bring about that end but because he is a geek.Fantasy football illustrated the same principle. If you know which NFL teams are better against the pass or allow tight end touchdowns in every game or whatever, and you use that knowledge to go get a job as, say, the offensive coordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles, then you are at least making a comfortable living for yourself and also helping a whole group of people to achieve a common professional goal, so people think you are doing something useful. But if you use that knowledge to dominate your fantasy football league, you are a geek.This means that the line separating geeks from non-geeks is, of course, arbitrary. The issue is not so much specialized knowledge, as almost everyone has some of that, but what kind of specialized knowledge, how specialized, and (most importantly) what use it is put to. In America, if the use it is put to is making money, then you are not a geek, really, Bill Gates notwithstanding. Because we think making money is an acceptable goal. If you run a highly successful game company or comic book store and are wealthy as a result, you are largely free of the nerd taint. But if you collect comics to read them, or play RPGs for fun and personal development, then you are a little weird. If you are a cooking geek, you will probably be free from ridicule because you produce food, which is valued. If you produce detailed maps of worlds that do not exist, you had better sell a million copies of an associated novel or else prepare to be mocked.

Trying fantasy football also showed me a little about how that arbitrary geek line can be blurred. Back when we lived in Louisville, which is already about ten years ago, I remember listening to a sports radio talk show in which any time anybody called in with any comment about fantasy football (or fantasy anything), the host would play a toilet flushing sound to indicate “get that crap out of here.” Here in the cities I can’t find that same show, if it still even exists, but I notice that time has greatly softened the attitude toward fantasy sports. Most talk shows will occasionally ask guests questions aimed at helping fantasy coaches, and there are even whole shows devoted to providing useful info for fantasy games (including a quite excellent one on a station here in the Twin Cities).

So, assuming my observation is accurate here, what has happened to move this geeky activity away from the margins and closer to the mainsteam? Why is fantasy football borderline acceptable, while RPGs are as nerdy as ever?

First, it helps that fantasy sports are an offshoot of a legitimized geek activity. Sports as a whole has a very large geek element: extremely specialized knowledge of something that has no practical, real world benefit. I like watching sports, but really, who cares who wins the World Series and when the last time they won was? Other than a name, what do the Boston Red Sox of 2004 have in common with the Red Sox of any other year? But of course, lots of guys (and it seems more and more women) put the “fanatic” in fan, memorizing obscure trivia, obsessing over every little decision and every play and every official’s call, and acting as though it all matters somehow. And because so many people do it, and because it’s big business, and because it serves a useful social function (of giving a relatively “safe” topic for stranger to converse about), it’s forgiven for being so geeky.

So that helped. I think it also helps that fantasy sports are good for sports in general. Fantasy football means that lots of people are more interested in every NFL game than they would otherwise be. Ordinarily, only devoted fans would care who wins in a game between two non-contending teams in week 16. But if you’re in a fantasy football league, one of those non-contending teams may have one of your star players on it. Even blowout games can stay interesting: maybe my quarterback can get another 100 yards in the air and another touchdown, even though his team’s obviously going to lose the game.

Also, fantasy football has a nice sliding level of involvement. You can’t be a completely uninvolved participant, really, but you can get involved without knowing much and then learn as you go. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing for the first three weeks. Then I kind of caught on and started making some roster shifts and doing okay. Then I fell apart at the end of the season and dropped from #3 of 8 to #6. Must be the Minnesota effect. But I managed to win the consolation tournament in my league. And I did this without being a total geek about it. But to win, to really win, you need a mix of luck and a very high level of geekness. This is probably true of any mental competition: spelling bees, chess, Texas Hold ‘Em, whatever.

The people who win and make big bucks at it are forgiven their geekiness because they’re being successful at the greed game, which Americans revere. And the people who pick a game that’s popular, like fantasy football, may get a pass too. But if you pick to specialize in something with no recognized value and only limited mainstream popularity just because you like it, come on, what a nerd.

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Fox Loses a Legend

This week’s TV Guide names the “top 25 science fiction legends” (by which they of course mean the top 25 legends from sci-fi TV shows). I could make lots of interesting observations about the list, but what strikes me the most is #18: Malcolm Reynolds, captain of the Serenity, from Joss Whedon’s Firefly. What’s remarkable about his inclusion, of course, is that Firefly only got about 11 episodes aired before Fox pulled the plug. Now, this isn’t another rant about how Firefly is better than any other sci-fi on and I can’t believe they’re still making Enterprise and Andromeda when they cancelled this. You can find plenty of those rants elsewhere. What I want to talk about is what went wrong, and who gets the blame.

What went wrong: it was on Fox.

Who gets the blame: Fox.

I’ve read other articles talking about how Fox mis-managed the launch of the show, and that’s certainly true. I’m no expert on time-slots, but obviously you don’t build an audience for a show by putting it on for a couple of weeks and then canceling it for most of a month for baseball games. I had a friend who was watching the show too, but after the first couple of episodes I’d ask her what she thought and she’d say, “Oh, I forgot it was on.”

But the sporadic showing of Firefly was really the last in a series of mistakes that doomed the show. Before that was the inexplicable decision to not air the pilot as the first episode. Now the show is strong enough that you can throw people into it almost anywhere and they’ll like it, but all the characters and the situation would have made a lot more sense if we could’ve started at the beginning, as owners of the DVD set now get to.

Before that bad decision came what was possibly the worst one: they let idiots decide how to market the show. This is probably part of a pattern of bad marketing. Back when I used to try to watch Star Trek: Voyager, I noticed that the previews would consistently misrepresent the episodes they were advertising. The preview would make it sound like the episode was about two female characters getting naked and having sex and maybe dying, and then the episode would turn out to be about a gravity anomaly that makes the crew sick or something. It’s a bait and switch move, and those are always frustrating. In the case of Firefly it was not merely frustrating but suicidal. When I saw the ads for this show, I rolled my eyes. The way they depicted it, it was a show about a tough guy captain and a tough guy mercenary and some other tough guys, and by the way there was a prostitute on board. It looked completely like a fourteen-year-old boy’s fantasy. I didn’t plan to watch it at all.

Of course, those ads left out a few things:
1) This is from Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc.
2) The crew isn’t all guys and it isn’t all tough guys. The pilot is wimpy and funny, and the doctor has courage but little experience in dangerous situations, and the second-in-command is a woman who may be the toughest person aboard.
3) And by the way, it isn’t just sci-fi, but a blend of sci-fi and western.

How did they ever imagine they would build an audience this way? People who would like the show, like me, were likely turned off by the ads. People who liked the ads were unlikely to watch the show. And so, not nearly enough people watched it, and Fox flushed it. But Whedon isn’t giving up. He’s working on a film, and he’s still crazy enough to dream that the film will be a success and allow him to re-launch the series.

Let’s just hope he works with someone other than Fox.


Now the best from Court Jester:

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Thou shalt be happy

In the store this morning I saw a book called The Ten Commandments of Financial Happiness. Obviously the author understands what Americans are all about. The original Ten Commandents weren't sold as the key to happiness, at least not for each individual. They were about communal happiness and prosperity, about having life be good in the deeper, richer sense. It's not that it makes you, individually happy to avoid stealing--it's that the community is healthier, and your neighbors are much happier, if you leave their stuff alone.

But all we care about is being happy, in the sense of being rich enough to get all the junk we want and waste it without worrying about the consequences. And now someone was smart enough to write a book specifying the ten commandments that will get you there. This is certain to at least bring the author some financial happiness.

Personally, I'm only happy financially when I'm not thinking about money. The one who made the first commandments, and who has the authority to make them commandments, not rules or principles or guidelines or suggestions, says you can't serve two masters.

Monday, January 03, 2005

Odds and Ends

No big resolution or anything, but I'm going to try to get back into blogging a bit with a more open-ended attitude about it.

If the NBA wants to clean up its act, it needs to replace players like Ron Artest with players like the Kansas City Chiefs defense--no matter what the provocation, those guys won't hit anybody.

On the street the other day, we say a sign that said "DANGER SIDEWALK CLOSED." If they know it's a danger sidewalk, why did they open it in the first place? And if you're wondering, the way they "closed" the sidewalk was by having it not exist, which is pretty effective.

The bad news for the Minnesota Vikings is, they backed their way into the playoffs, and given the pathetic state of the NFC, they might even do okay there. This is bad because what this team really needs is some pressure to make serious changes. But I guess those changes will have to start with a new owner.

Speaking of owners, I wish to establish the Frozen Tundra Bowl somewhere here in Minnesota because I don't think there are enough bowl games already. Some teams with perfectly respectable 4-8 records didn't get to go to a bowl game. So if you happen to be a large corporation with lots of money to throw around sponsoring a bowl game, get in touch with me or just send me a check for several million dollars.

I've been trying to find a complete fantasy novel to read that isn't "volume 1" of some series or isn't 800 pages all by its lonesome. Guess how that's going.

Trying to write a novel isn't any easier, either.

If you missed it, you need to see Bucky Katt's tupperware armor. Get Fuzzy rocks.

Scott McCloud, your new year's resolution needs to be to start doing morning improvs again!

New year, new week, new blog entry. Back to work!

Thursday, September 30, 2004

My Prophetic Powers

I am willing to endure almost any amount of suffering to be a thorough blogger. So I have spent 35 of my personal minutes (and a goodly share of blood pressure) this morning listening to the message on same-sex marriage that I wrote about a few weeks ago. My regular readers will remember this, but of course they have all had their computers seized by the U.S. Justice Department, so I should explain.

I got a postcard in the mail about an upcoming “sermon series” at a nearby mega-church called “Lost it? Reclaim it!” The sermon that struck me the most was the one encouraging us to reclaim “morality in a same-sex marriage world.” I wondered why they chose same-sex marriage / homosexuality as their chief example of immorality, and I went on to make several predictions about the sermon in question. Last weekend the message was finally preached, and today I listened to it online. While not all of my predictions came true, I’m happy to report that I still have some of my hair after listening to the message.

For those of you who are too lazy to scroll down and read the original or simply too smart to read two of my messages in one day, here were my predictions:

So of course their message on morality is going to attack same-sex
marriage. Other popular examples of immorality will probably be drug use (but
not alcohol abuse), abortion, swearing, general rudeness, and possibly street
crime. In other words, the general message is probably going to be “Isn’t it
awful how that outside world is, so don’t you want to come join us here where
it’s safe from all of that.” And by “outside world” what they’ll really mean is
lower-class / deviant / politically left-leaning. This is, after all, a church
by and for wealthy white people in the suburbs, and they’re busy building a
bigger church even farther into the suburbs. Which really explains why greed
isn’t their example of immorality. If they challenged greed, they’d have to say
that money shouldn’t be anyone’s first priority. They’d have to acknowledge that
it’s important that money be earned honestly. And they might even have to
mention that our money should largely be used to help those who don’t have any.
In addition to being a left-leaning idea, this could lead someone to question
whether they should be spending over $2 million to build just the children’s
wing of their new facility.

As I said, I wasn’t 100% accurate in these predictions. This was in part because I assumed from the title “Morality in a Same-Sex Marriage World” that the focus of the message would be on how to reclaim morality. In fact, nothing was really said about how morality could be reclaimed. The emphasis was solely on same-sex marriage, and here were the key points:
1) Homosexuality is bad.
2) Same-sex marriage is bad.
3) Same-sex marriage will destroy “the family.”
4) So we need a Constitutional amendment.
5) Liberalism is bad, and conservativism is good, but I can’t tell you who to vote for, so you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.

So the speaker never got into abortion, swearing, drug use, and the rest, because homosexuality was the whole issue, and political solutions were at the center of the discussion. Along the way, there was one token mention that all sexual sin, “not just homosexuality” was bad. And perhaps the best point the speaker made was toward the end when he said that if heterosexuals really got their act together and did it right, we probably wouldn’t even have this debate. I actually agree with that, but it makes me wonder why that wasn’t the central point of the message.

The other good point was when he challenged the audience to be better about the “love the sinner” part of the old admonition, and he admitted that as a church “we’ve got the hate part down.” Unfortunately the instructions for how to love homosexuals were a little vague, except that we should amend the whole Constitution of the U.S. to prevent them from marrying because we are afraid that they will destroy marriage, but this must not be construed as homophobia. It must also not be construed as terribly logical, since the speaker claims that only 2% of people are homosexual, and this is almost always the result of some kind of abuse or neglect, and in any case, he cites example after example of what a good thing marriage is. So apparently our loving message is that marriage is really, really good, so out of love for you, we can’t let you have it. Oh, and by the way, all you single parents out there, when I listed all those ways that marriage was good and married people were better and kids would be hurt if they didn’t have two parents, I wasn’t talking about you, okay?

I did have one prediction that was spot-on, however, which is probably more accurate than all the speaker’s predictions of what will happen if same-sex marriage is allowed. I predicted that in all the talk of the immorality of our society, there’s be no attack on greed. And there wasn’t, at least from the speaker. Of course in the process of condemning homosexuality, he did find occasion to cite I Corinthians 6: “Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” He made a point that this passage isn’t referring to people who “fall into” this sin, but to people who “embrace the lifestyle” of a particular sin. His point, of course, was that our culture can’t condone people who embrace a sinful lifestyle, in particular homosexuality. He made no mention of the word “greedy” in the passage.

And after listening, all the people went out and got in their Lexuses and BMWs and drove to their lakefront homes and congratulated the speaker on being so right.

Monday, August 30, 2004

Lost and Found

I got an interesting postcard from a nearby mega-church the other day. They have an upcoming “Fall Message Series” they want me to attend. Well, not me, specifically. It’s addressed to “our neighbors at” my address. Anyway, this series is called “Lost it? Reclaim it!” and each week features a different item that has been lost. Week 1, for example, is called “SANITY in a Drive-Thru World.” Apparently drive-thrus are insane, possibly because of their spelling.

Week 2 is the one that really struck me, though. In week two, they are going to discuss the lost and reclaim-ness of “MORALITY in a Same-Sex Marriage World.” That took me aback a bit, and not just because of the irony that week 3 is “COMPASSION in a Hate-Filled World.” (Maybe in week 3 they will apologize for the gay-bashing of week 2.) I wondered how they chose same-sex marriage as their epitome of immorality.

It just seems to me that, looking around at our society, they might notice one or two other sins that were a tiny bit more prevalent than homosexuals wanting to get married. If they had chosen violence, I would have understood. Our popular media certainly glorify, glamorize, and over-publicize violence, so it can seem like we live in a very violent society although, in fact, we do not. If they had chosen heterosexual lust, or lust generically, as an example of immorality, that would make a lot of sense. But most obvious of all, if we’re going to talk about the immorality of American culture, is greed and its little brother materialism. You only need to watch about two minutes of television commercials or just drive down the street to see that the word “pervasive” doesn’t begin to describe the presence of greed in our society.

So it seemed to me like greed would make a much better illustration of how morality was “lost” for most people and needed to be reclaimed. But then I woke up and realized I was an idiot. Because blasting same-sex marriage is a very popular position, and the whole point of this mailer is to be popular. Their tag line makes clear what they want: “If you’ve lost it, reclaim it at [our] church!” Not if you’ve lost it, God will give it to you. (God is not mentioned anywhere on the postcard.) If you’ve lost it, we have it, come get it. We’re like Target, except we’re only open on the weekends.

So of course their message on morality is going to attack same-sex marriage. Other popular examples of immorality will probably be drug use (but not alcohol abuse), abortion, swearing, general rudeness, and possibly street crime. In other words, the general message is probably* going to be “Isn’t it awful how that outside world is, so don’t you want to come join us here where it’s safe from all of that.” And by “outside world” what they’ll really mean is lower-class / deviant / politically left-leaning. This is, after all, a church by and for wealthy white people in the suburbs, and they’re busy building a bigger church even farther into the suburbs. Which really explains why greed isn’t their example of immorality. If they challenged greed, they’d have to say that money shouldn’t be anyone’s first priority. They’d have to acknowledge that it’s important that money be earned honestly. And they might even have to mention that our money should largely be used to help those who don’t have any. In addition to being a left-leaning idea, this could lead someone to question whether they should be spending over $2 million to build just the children’s wing of their new facility.

(*To be fair, I don’t know what the message will contain since it hasn’t happened yet. I’m just guessing based on what I observed at this church when I visited. My wife suggested for them the slogan “Now with a third less Scripture!” If I remember, I might try to listen to the message once it’s posted online to see how my predictions pan out.)

So overall I have to hand it to them. They’ve packed a lot into a little postcard. It’s the perfect invitation: those who read it and feel good about it will probably be comfortable at this place. And those of us who read it and feel excluded know better than to show up.

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Christian Colleges and Swearing

Some months ago, my wife was deciding whether to apply for a job at a nearby private, Christian college. One of the requirements for applying was to agree to their elaborate statement of responsibilities for “membership in the college community.” Here’s a part of that statement that especially struck us:

The College acknowledges that there are many things that are disputable,
which the Bible does not specifically forbid us to use, though it certainly
forbids us to abuse them (Romans 14:1-15:6; I Corinthians 8-10). Nevertheless,
the College expects that all members of the community will rule and govern
themselves in such a way as to abstain from the following things: gambling,
possession and use of alcoholic beverages, possession and use of tobacco
products, possession and use of non-medicinal drugs, and most forms of social
dancing. Year-round abstinence from these is expected of all administration,
faculty, staff, and students to assure an environment that is suitable to
accomplish the College’s mission. Deliberate participation in any of the
above on the part of any member of the College community will result in
administrative review and appropriate action. Continual participation will
result in dismissal from the College community.

My wife found this a little legalistic for her tastes. My reaction was somewhat stronger, and may have involved the word “Nazis.”

Being a more reasonable person than I am, she tried to get clarification of this policy, particularly the alcohol prohibition. Because the way this text reads, it seems to mean that
1) You can’t receive Communion at a church that uses wine.
2) You can’t own cooking wine.
3) You can’t have a beer in your refrigerator to offer to a friend.
4) If you go to a wedding and Jesus shows up and provides free wine, you should look down your nose at him, shake your head, and make the little “tsk” noise.

But her attempts to get clarification were merely met with a restatement of the policy and its absolute, no-exceptions nature.

Obviously this college was strongly committed to its position. It’s a little hard to understand why. I mean, they readily admit in the statement that there is no Biblical support for this position. And for a “non-denominational” college to require “all administration, faculty, staff, and students” to abstain from receiving Communion in Lutheran, Episcopal, or Catholic churches seems a little odd. But they give their reason: “Year-round abstinence from these is expected…to assure an environment that is suitable to accomplish the College’s mission.” Apparently, the college’s mission would be derailed if one of its community members, somewhere, was off playing poker for money or smoking. And you can just imagine the chaos that would result if they knew that some professor liked to go home after work and take the spouse out dancing.

Seriously, though, I’m sure this statement provides a real benefit to the college. Because it is in place, they can rest assured that everyone who belongs to the community is either
1) a Christian who happens not to be particularly tempted by gambling, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, or dancing or
2) a liar.
And of course the purpose of a Christian college is to educate. This policy taught my wife and me a lot, and it probably teaches young Christians a lot too: to expect irrationality and legalism from all Christian institutions, and how to lie like a dog to be accepted in a Christian community.

Monday, July 12, 2004

The End of the World!

I have concluded that I am apparently the only Christian alive who is not 100% convinced that we must be living in The End Times. I’ll allow that we might be near the end of the world, but I also think maybe God won’t end the world for another eight or ten thousand years. Yet it seems I can’t go a week without hearing somebody else say that we are definitely in The Final Days. And I am open-minded enough to acknowledge that if every other Christian on the planet disagrees with me, there is a slim chance I am wrong and they are right. So in the interest of a fair exploration of this issue, I present

A completely balanced and fair discussion of the question “Will the world end soon?” (correct answer: probably not)
To join me in this discussion, I have invited noted end-times expert Dr. Willard R. Ong (hereinafter, W.R.ONG) to join me. Since he is on my left, I will be referred to in the following transcript as RIGHT.

RIGHT: So what is the compelling evidence that leads so many Christians to conclude that we must be living in the end times?
WRONG: Every day there are many clear signs that the End is upon us. Look at the “wars and rumors of wars”!
RIGHT: You mean, like the wars that our President, who we are told over and over is a man of strong Christian faith even if we can't see any evidence of that in his actual running of the country, is carrying out?
WRONG: Exactly.
RIGHT: And has there ever been a period of history when no wars were going on? And weren’t wars just a sign that “the end is not yet?”
WRONG: But it is clearly coming. The best evidence is in the detailed interpretations of the end-times prophecies that expert scholars have developed.
RIGHT: I’m familiar with some of these prophecies. They all involve very elaborate “decoding” of the symbols in these prophecies, right?
WRONG: Exactly, and they show that all the signs of the end are coming to pass all around us.
RIGHT: Don’t a lot of those interpretations rely on some pretty large assumptions, like that the Israel of the prophecies is the modern nation of Israel as opposed to the church, which would make more sense?
WRONG: I’m sure the experts are in a better position than you to judge that.
RIGHT: And haven’t people been coming up with similar decodings for years, and haven’t all of them been wrong?
WRONG: The earlier interpretations were wrong; ergo, ours, the only one left, must be right.
RIGHT: I can’t argue with logic like that. But I do notice that there’s been an unbroken pattern throughout history that every generation of Christians thinks this must be the end.
WRONG: But now it’s clear and all around us! Look at how terrible our society has become!
RIGHT: Um…terrible?
WRONG: Do you know how few people go to church on any given Sunday?
RIGHT: Do you know how boring most church services are?
WRONG: Blasphemy! It’s a clear sign that people are turning their backs on God!
RIGHT: Yeah. Because I’m sure when all the people went to church out of social expectation they were completely devoted to God and not hypocrites at all.
WRONG: It’s not just church attendance. Look at how crime-ridden our society is.
RIGHT: Actually, crime rates are low and the broad trend is downward. We’re just very worried about crime because we see news reports about it all the time with no context.
WRONG: You cannot deny that we live in a violent society.
RIGHT: We certainly glorify violence and sell it in both media and the political arena as a solution to problems. But we’re hardly more violent than the Middle Ages or the Roman Empire at its worst.
WRONG: But clearly the trend is downward. We, the most Christian nation on earth…
RIGHT: OK, I’ll have to do a whole ‘nother blog on that.
WRONG: …are clearly becoming more corrupt, what with drugs and gangs and filthy movies.
RIGHT: I’ll grant that a move toward more subtlety about sex would be a welcome change, but it’s not like everything was pristine and innocent fifty years ago.
WRONG: Fifty years ago was a better time! People didn’t lock their houses! Women dressed decently and stayed home to raise their families!
RIGHT: And black people could be lynched in the streets with nothing be done about it!
WRONG: Look, all the signs that are clearly mentioned are present now. There’s simply no other alternative than to believe these are the end times.
RIGHT: No other alternative?
WRONG: Exactly.
RIGHT: What about this? Those signs are all present because they’ve always been present, in every age, to remind Christians that he is coming back and we should be looking forward to it.
WRONG: If you just want to produce wild, uneducated opinions, I can’t stop you. But the scholars and experts have studied the prophecies at great length, and they’ve concluded that the world is ending soon. Other than being right, what possible reason could they have to say that?
RIGHT: I can’t think of a thing, unless it’s wishful thinking so that they don’t have to take responsibility for the long-term consequences of their actions.
WRONG: Preposterous.
RIGHT: Plus I think they’ve sold several million books.

Thursday, July 08, 2004

New Christians Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

I’m trying to get ready to deal with the thousands of new converts we’ll be seeing after the Luis Paolo event (see below). That’s a lot of new Christians all at once, and I’m sure they’ll have a lot of questions. So as a public service, I’m presenting here the New Christians Frequently Asked Questions list!

Q: When I got saved, they told me to find a Bible-believing church. How do I do that?
A: This is made very easy by the fact that every church claims to be Bible-believing, even if their teachings and practices contradict the Bible so blatantly that they have to invoke some other book or person with authority equal or superior to the Bible.
Q: Then how do I go about picking a church that’s right for me?
A: This is less difficult than it seems, and most people can find a church they are comfortable with during their first thirty years as a believer. But finding a church is made easier because the institutional church is very, very organized. The first step is to identify the key factor that will tell you if you belong in a particular church or not.
Q: What’s that key factor? Theological positions? Style of worship?
A: No, wealth. If you are rich, you belong in a rich person church. I recently visited a church that was building a new building even further into the suburbs. The week I visited they were bragging about how they had raised the $2.2 million needed for the children’s wing of the new church. Obviously you need to be rich to go to this church. And incidentally, if you are not white, you need to be very, very rich to go to this church.
Q: Once I find some churches in my wealth level, how do I pick?
A: This is where the organization of the institutional church will really pay off for you. It’s kind of like going into a video store. If you’re in the mood for a shoot-‘em-up action movie, you don’t want to accidentally get some thoughtful drama instead. So Christian churches are divided into categories where you’ll only get what you like and never anything that’s challenging or unusual. We want church-going to be easy and automatic, just like it was for the early church, except that they all lived under the constant threat of being tortured or killed for what they believed.
Q: What kind of categories are there?
A: The basic categories are weighty and traditional, energetic and emotional, strict and intolerant, welcoming and vague, or well-meaning but disorganized.
Q: What if I want a church that’s really exclusive and standoffish, one that refuses to acknowledge that any other churches have anything of value to offer?
A: You can easily find that in any of the categories.
Q: Once I find a church, then what will happen?
A: Again, the modern church really strives to make everything easy for you. So you will probably get to go to some kind of class or small group where they will tell you everything you should believe, think, and do for the rest of your life.
Q: What if I want to think for myself?
A: Then you are going to be miserable in church for a long time, so you might as well get used to it.
Q: But what if I really disagree with a particular teaching of a church I’m in?
A: Most churches offer two convenient plans for such a situation:
1) They can send some tireless crusader to lecture you from (and if necessary, physically pummel you with) the Bible until you change your mind.
2) You can lie.
As usual, the church is very flexible. By lying and claiming you agree with everything the church teaches, you will be allowed to stay in the fold. As an added bonus, you will suddenly find new relevance to all the verses where the Bible talks about hypocrisy!
Q: Couldn’t I just find another church that I do agree with?
A: Absolutely, as long as you mean “agree with” on just that one particular point. But Christian churches all have thousands of points of teaching, and they’re inventing new ones all the time, so your best bet is to get comfortable with lying.
Q: What if I’m not comfortable with lying about my beliefs?
A: Again, never let it be said that the modern church made anybody uncomfortable. You can join an exciting new trend called “church-hopping.” The way this works is, you go to a church for a while and get excited about it. You start to meet some people you like, and for a while you are very happy. Then you gradually become aware of some things you don’t like in the church, such as their particular teachings, or the obvious disconnect between what they say and what they do, or how much of your money they seem to need to put on a show every week, and then you start looking for a new church. Many Christians are finding this method now seems like second nature.
Q: Is there anything else a new Christian needs to know other than how to find a church?
A: Not that any official spokesperson will probably tell you, no. But you should know that you are about to get your butt kicked. You will likely face immediate doubts about whether your conversion was real, or whether God is real, or whether you can really be saved. You may face immediate or delayed trouble in your life, either as a direct result of choosing to follow God or seemingly unrelated.
Q: Any last advice for me?
A: Yeah. Try to keep your mouth shut. I know you’re all excited about this new thing and you want to share it with everyone you know or everyone you encounter, but you don’t know how to do that yet. Go find some Christians you respect—in a church or outside of it—and hang with them and learn what the Bible says and figure out what it means to be a Christian so when you do share your faith, you know the answers to the questions you’re going to get asked. In the meantime, you can tell people you’ve made a change in your life and are happy about it—and leave it at that.

 

In with the new

My previous blogging efforts faded out, I think because I was trying to focus too much. Without some kind of steady feedback or indication that they were worthwhile, I couldn't keep going doing the same kind of thing over and over. So I'm trying a more generic blog, where I can just post what I feel like, and we'll see if I can maintain this.

I will soon delete the old blogs, but first I will import over any entries that seem worth preserving.

And then I'll get to picking on Lost, which will be the first new post of substance.

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